City councillors were initially told they would have to publicly disclose the free tickets they were getting to this weekend’s home opener for the Ottawa Fury.Mike Carroccetto
/ The Ottawa Citizen

Some councillors resistance to disclosing free Ottawa Fury tickets suggests transparency may not be fully in fashion yet in all corners of city hall, writes Joanne ChianelloJustin Tang
/ Ottawa Citizen

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OTTAWA — When the Ottawa Fury FC offered councillors free tickets to the team’s inaugural home opener on Saturday at Carleton University, the soccer club could not have known it would set off a minor furor in the halls of municipal power. In the end, accepting the tickets wasn’t an issue at all, but the discussion spoke volumes about how some view the city’s new integrity rules.

Ever since the code of conduct for councillors was approved about a year ago, elected officials have been compelled to register any gifts worth more than $30. That includes tickets to events that are not considered to be part of a councillor’s regular job.

So when councillors were offered the tickets, they checked in with integrity commissioner Robert Marleau about whether they needed to disclose the tickets and what they were worth. Elected officials are often given VIP tickets — or in this case, addressed to a “Club Seat Holder” — with no prices printed on them, so Marleau checked with a ticket agent and put a theoretic price of $70 on each ticket.

As enough councillors had asked about the tickets, Marleau emailed a memo to all councillors to tell them what the tickets were worth and to remind them to register the tickets as gifts, considering the event “is not directly tied to your representative role as a Member of Council.”

That’s when the fury, so to speak, started in the form of some poorly thought-out selections of the “reply all” option.

Barrhaven Coun. Jan Harder opined that “It is very unfortunate that consideration of the first ever professional soccer team in the City of Ottawa, one that will make its home at Lansdowne when completed is not seen as something that Councillors and Mayor ‘should’ attend ... Because of this I will not be attending unless I buy my own tickets.”

Then Kanata South Coun. Allan Hubley weighed in that “this needs to be revisited as it impacts our ability to do our jobs.”

And finally, my personal favourite, Orléans Coun. Bob Monette: “This is something that needs to be revisited when the new council is formed unfortunately we all agreed on the present process even though there are apparent issues with it.”

There are serious problems with all of these statements, which illuminate how long it will take for a culture of true transparency and accountability to take hold in some corners of City Hall.

Let’s start with the most egregious: “Unfortunately we all agreed on the present process,” writes Monette, who is running for reelection after promising he’d step down after two terms. Note the word “unfortunately”, suggesting that the councillor did not truly believe in the new integrity rules — or at least not all of them. It will be interesting to note whether Monette’s re-election campaign literature includes a promise to revisit the gift registry rules.

Then there’s Hubley’s comment that, somehow, having to register these tickets as gifts impedes councillors from doing their jobs. How so? There’s no fathomable reason that councillors must go to a soccer game to better serve their constituents or the city at large.

And that brings us to Harder’s complaint that the game is not seen as an event that councillors “should” attend. Of course they can attend it — they just have to tell people. If for some reason a councillor thinks his or her constituents would be upset by their elected representative accepting a couple of soccer tickets (which seems unlikely), then the councillor shouldn’t accept them. Instead, a few — not all, it must be noted — want to accept the tickets but keep the fact from the public.

In the end, the entire issue was rendered moot after Coun. Scott Moffatt sensibly questioned the value of the tickets, which seem to sell for much less than $70. A few hours later, Marleau admitted his mistake (turns out there are no actual “club seats” at the Carleton stadium), and the tickets, including fees and taxes, are $25.26. And that means the tickets won’t have to be disclosed after all.

That’s too bad. Disclosing free gifts doesn’t take much time, and whatever effort it does require is certainly worth what we get in return: transparency.

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